


Too Close

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Common Law
Genre: First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Travis is confused and concerned by Wes' anger at HR suggesting they're 'too close.'  It's pretty bad timing, too - what with the holidays, and all he's started feeling for his partner lately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. HR

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asphaltcowgrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asphaltcowgrrl/gifts).



**Two days before Christmas**   
**9:25 am**

“I’m _telling you,_ I’ve had it…”

“Yup. You’re telling me. I know you are, ‘cause you’ve been going on about it for fifteen minutes, blondie. Problem is you get wound up so easy it’s …kinda like the boy who cried wolf. A guy stops listening.”

“This time? I mean it. It’s not bad enough they send us to a shrink; now we have to go sit and prove to some … _freak_ upstairs in human resources that we’re not getting too close.”

“It’s procedure, Wes; they want to check in and make sure they’re getting what they’re paying for. It’s nothing personal, and I’m sure he’s not actually a freak except for in your angry, frustrated head.”

“For cripes’ sake…what’s that even supposed to mean? Too close? When have we ever been in danger of being too close?”

Travis started to respond, then chose to bite the words on the tip of his tongue back; to stare at the ground and shake his head, and merely huff out a sound that said ‘you don’t see yourself, do you, babe?’

Wes had been with him so often, lately; just there all the time - calling with thoughts on cases, showing up after work with a six pack in one hand and takeout in the other that Travis practically hadn’t had a free night in a month.

Not that he’d minded. In fact, if he were honest with himself, he’d come to count on Wes showing up. Had looked forward to that knock on the door. Had woken up for work with faint recollections of sweet filthy, filthy dreams that his brain maybe, might have spun up about his partner overnight.

Coulda been anyone in those dreams, though, right? They were … sketchy. It wasn’t….like he ever…saw a face to put the moan to. And some of his girlfriends, when they got wound up? They had the deep, throaty thing going on, too.

“Look, everyone in the department answers to someone, right?” Travis said it in his best ‘calm down, take a deep breath’ voice and the combination seemed, happily, to work for once. “So let’s pay our mandatory visit to HR, answer their questions….and that’s that. You can get back to bitching at _me_ instead of _about_ them and it’ll be like any other Wednesday.”

~*~

10:30 am

“What…the hell?” Travis practically chased Wes from out of the building to their car. “I think your very bad attitude in there might have bought us a dozen more meetings with that dude. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking he’s a frigging jerk! Telling me I can’t have Christmas dinner with you…”

“He didn’t say you couldn’t. He only asked if maybe it wasn’t…a little unusual us turning to each other for company on a holiday. Especially considering our situation.”

“You’re not … _turning_ to me. You’re having lunch with your foster mom and your step-sibs _first_ , right?”

“Right. And then you and I are scheduled to have dinner. And dessert. And to watch football; as in we are willingly, intentionally spending the rest of the damn holiday together and yeah, maybe that’s not what they expected to hear.”

“You want me to bow out?” Wes offered. “Cause I can hit a diner and grab a drink at some bar, and I’ll be fine. Not gonna cry in my pillow all night just because you let some civil servant tell you how to live your life.”

“You’re missing the point, Wes: I don’t have a problem with us hanging out," Travis tried to keep the 'hell no' out of his voice, tried not to let it show that it was most definitely not what he wanted. "They might have a problem but that’s their issue, not ours. It’s not like they’re anywhere close to firing us over it, so….how about we take note of it, keep our thoughts closer to the vest around them in the future and…. let it the hell go.”

“Fine. I know I should have shut it back there, I just…I couldn’t.”

“You don’t have any problem clamming up in our sessions, though, do you?”

“I know, I know,” Wes shuffled around by the passenger’s side door of the car, hand absently on the door handle. “But it seems…with them? Questioning us in our own damn building? Somehow it’s a little more ‘all in the family’ or something and …it really pissed me off.”

“You need to lighten the hell up.”

“I know. I’m trying," Travis heard something close to contrite in that voice and wasn't that kind of sweet on the ears? "So... we’re still on? For dinner? For Christmas?”

“Hell, yeah, we are. Got everything all lined up, and the fridge stocked.”

“Well…all right. Sounds good."

~*~

**The Night Before Christmas**   
**8pm**

Travis meant it when he said he was fully prepared for their festivities. Except….

He stood staring into his fridge and he saw it: Strawberries and bars of good chocolate ready for melting; two nice sirloins, and the makings for homemade steak sauce; asparagus and champagne and in case the strawberries were not a hit, chocolate coconut macaroons to heat up into firm but gooey goodness along with raspberries to brighten the plate they would sit on.

The whole thing visibly screamed ‘aiming for your heart through your stomach’ and …damn if he hadn’t shopped like this was a date.

It was a wakeup call, the sight of it: That maybe he had gotten some hopes up these last few weeks, had spun the two of them spending more time together into something...it probably wasn't. Not to Wes, at least.

Travis sighed deeply, then searched up his jacket and headed back to the store for food that said ‘buddy’ instead of 'want you.'

~tbc~


	2. The New Normal

“What’s this?” Wes asked.

It took a minute for Travis to hear him. He was busy pulling the ingredients for dinner together; distracted with grabbing pans and knives, searching up his very-seldom-ever used cutting board.

He really _did_ cook…sometimes. He had to have one, somewhere. A cutting board. He could picture it; he just couldn’t find it.

“What’s _what_?” He finally asked back.

“This,” Wes pulled it from the refrigerator door and waggled it at him. “Champagne?”

“You say it like you found a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex in there.”

“Did you buy it for tonight?”

“I said ‘go grab a beer,’ right?” Travis countered. “So…no. I didn’t. I bought _beer_ for tonight. Grab some and get your butt back here. Help me with the preps.”

“What’s _that_?” Wes pretty much ignored him, reaching deeper into the fridge, his voice full of _intrigued_.

Travis turned to see Wes picking up the pan with the chocolate coconut macaroons. 

Oh…hell.

“Will you stop going through my damn fridge?”

Travis hadn’t needed to rip up his planned menu as much as he’d feared: The sirloins he sliced up for fajitas. The asparagus went into a salad. And he’d picked up tortillas, along with the makings for homemade salsa plus a store-bought pie for dessert.

It was a meal that looked thought-out and festive enough not to raise Wes’ suspicions, yet casual enough not to raise Wes’ suspicions.

He hadn’t considered the possibility that Wes would actually _notice_ the bottle of bubbly or the fancier dessert tucked back there. Dammit… he should have gone and gotten the drinks himself, and let Wes look for the cutting board which…

Finally. There it was. 

“Are we having these after dinner?” Wes asked, looking reluctant to put all that chocolaty goodness down. 

“We can... if you want,” Travis tried to make it sound like it was of no real importance to him either way. “I kind of was saving them for another night, but…”

“That’s okay. Pie’s fine.”

“No, bring ‘em over.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Let ‘em warm up to room temp while we eat….”

He felt a flush running up his neck and over his face; both at Wes’ series of accidental discoveries, and the fibs he was telling Wes left and right. He hoped maybe he’d catch one damn break today and wouldn’t get caught out on blushing, too.

The funny part was, they’d had such a good afternoon so far: Had watched a movie, shot the breeze, and it was….comfortable. Easy.  Enjoyable. Travis felt it once again: that something had shifted, lately- and so much for the better.

It _couldn’t_ be all in his head. 

But what about Wes’ temper tantrum yesterday, over HR calling them upstairs? That didn’t seem like Wes being comfortable with ‘them’ at all. So maybe it was wishful thinking. How would he know, if he didn’t push past this? For both of them?

Travis took a deep breath.

“Listen, Wes, you can tell me otherwise and I won’t be insulted,” he said, searching up knives to help with the slicing and dicing. “But…don’t you think things are different between us lately? Haven’t you…”

“Different like…what?”

Wes’ back went up: Microscopically, infinitesimally. But …hackles up. For sure.

“I don’t know… like…. well, we still bitch at each other, but we’re always _around_. Each other. Most of the day and the night and….”

“I think that’s kind of an exaggeration,” Wes literally shrugged it off.

“Do you? Well how about this,” Travis stepped in a bit to make the point. “I’ve got food in my place that’s clearly intended to impress. That you just bumped into. And you seem to have a clue it’s _meant to impress_ so …who’d you think it was for?”

“I don’t know… a date? For the weekend? Or maybe someone you lined up in case I cancelled?”

“I did _not_ formulate a backup plan for Christmas,” Travis said. “I …”

“Yeah, right. You bought all that for _us_ ….” Wes had started having a go at the green peppers and onions for the fajitas; was chopping them so hard the cutting board was rocking on its slightly lopsided, dish-washer warped edges. “As if.”

“Will you slow down? You’re gonna cut a finger off.”

Travis reached gingerly for the handle of the cutting board, other hand going to Wes' shoulder to shake it - a gentle suggestion of "stop” in the gesture.

He was kind of afraid to loose a finger of his own; Wes was that wound.

Wes did, happily, seem to get it. He stopped knifing the veggies like a maniac and then even tossed the knife away, well clear off all twenty of their digits.

“How about I do the preps, after all…” Travis said. “And you …”

‘Stand there and look pretty,’ he thought. ‘Have a drink, kick your shoes off, relax, and give me a smooch’ he absolutely did not say.

“No. I’ve got it,” Wes waited a beat then reached back for the knife, proceeding to dice much more calmly. “Sorry. Guess I’m uptight today. Guess it’s that time of year…”

“You _guess_? You’re wound like a weed whacker. That can’t be all about the holidays?”

Travis expected to hear something fairly predictable: The pressures of the season, Wes’ ex, Wes was gonna die alone, etcetera, etcetra, et…." 

“It’s because I want something…someone….in the new year. And it’s someone I can’t have. You can’t fix it for me, so stop trying.”

Well…crap.

Travis felt the floor shifting under his feet – ready to drop out from under him along with all his stupid random thoughts, dreams and desires for his partner.

“So… this is all about…someone else?” he heard himself asking, as if from a great distance. “Not about tonight, or me, or anything to do with me?”

“Right,” Wes said. “S’never been about you. Sorry if I made you feel that way – just bad timing, the rest of the world being all festive and me… _not_ festive. At all. I guess it pushed me past the point of patience with my life.”

“Not about me,” Travis heard himself saying once more, like his mouth was trying to inform his brain of something it didn’t want to accept. “This is not about me. I’m glad we cleared that up.”

What the hell? What the actual hell?

Who was this person? Was it a he?  A she? And why did Travis automatically hate them? It’s not like they’d done anything to deserve it, whoever they were; they had no idea they were tap dancing on his heart right this second; wrecking his Christmas and stealing his hope.

He was shook enough by the news to let it all go. He sure as heck didn’t want a name or a face to put to it all tonight. No way.

Merry frigging Christmas.

~*~ 

Somehow the day got back on course after that, though; Wes calmed down, and the two of them fell back into comfortable silence and easy conversation as they cooked. The distractions of yummy food smells didn’t hurt in that process.

The cooking, followed by a delicious meal and a surprisingly exciting Redskins-Eagles game, melted away any lingering discomfort.

Travis had half an eye on his partner, though. He could see Wes’ relief was partly from the chance to vent a bit, and also that he wouldn’t be asked to unpack any more complicated feelings tonight, and hold them up to a light. Wes got so comfortable, in fact, that he drifted off on Travis’ couch into a long, deep post-dinner nap. Sitting at the other end, watching Wes curled up on most of his damn sofa all loose and inviting, eyes moving underneath his dreaming lids, that’s when Travis decided it.

“Hell no,” he said to himself. “They don’t get you. At least, not without a fight.”

He got up carefully to avoid rousing him and headed for the kitchen.

 ~*~ 

The sweet scents of chocolate coconut macaroons coming out of the oven were filling the place by the time Wes woke up.

“I fell asleep….” Came the voice from the living room, his voice still heavy with drowsiness, sounding a bit amazed.

“Yeah you did,” Travis called back from the kitchen. “It’s fine - you handled half of the cooking and cleaning, so…. take your time. I got this part.”

Wes was sitting up, feet finding the coffee table, stretching to push the last of the ‘sleepies’ out of his body when Wes came around the corner.

With one plate in his hand. 

“What’s the deal?” Wes asked, chin jutting toward it.

“With what?”

“One plate. What’s the deal with that?”

“I think we should share our dessert.” 

“You do, huh?”

Travis gave him a ‘scoot’ nod, then sat down beside him before Wes could object: _Close_ beside him, hip to hip, setting the large plate full of gooey, chocolate, and berry with even-more-berry-and-chocolate-sauce on top goodness atop one of each of their thighs.

“Yes. I do. I also think we should share more about what came up earlier.”

“Why?” Wes asked, and there was so much worry and hesitation in that one word. “Why tonight? It’s been …such a good day. Mostly.”

“Because you were vague about this person you can’t have and who they are, and it’s bugging me. And because there’s a window.”

“There’s a window?” Wes asked. 

“Uh-huh.”

“A conceptual window? Or… your actual window?”

Wes was looking at the living room windows, like he was thinking he might like to climb out of one of them.

“If we don’t talk tonight,” Travis speared a macaroon with the one fork he had brought, sliding it through some of the raspberry sauce, “well, maybe we never talk. And maybe things happen with you and this…. _person_ you won’t name, that _shouldn’t_. And maybe things that _should_ happen…they never do.”

He reached, slowly, holding the treat up for Wes, and watched him take it; Wes hesitating, leaning in to accept the macaroon, teeth tapping the tines as he pulled it into his mouth. It sent a jolt and a shiver through Travis, that tap of teeth, the drag on the fork in his hand – a shiver that ran from fingers to wrist, down his arm and all through him.

Wes’s eyes had locked with his for a second when he took that bite. Now he was silent, eyes on the floor, the plate, anything not to look right back at him. He looked like he was still deciding: Whether to go forward with this, to talk or to shut it all down.

“You start,” Wes said. “This was not my idea and….I can’t. I can’t start.”

“That nervous, huh?” Travis said; calm, not confrontational, dragging a second macaroon around the plate for himself. “If you can’t even talk about it, must really mean something to you?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth….” Wes stopped there, at the realization he had just let Travis put something else in his mouth; at the intimacy of all this.

Travis chewed his macaroon, smiling, eyebrows waggling ever so slightly in suggestion of what else he might like to put in Wes mouth. At least that got a chuckle out of Wes, and a small, light blush on his cheekbones.

“Okay,” Travis said. “I’ll start:  I know that you haven’t been showing up all the time by accident. You’re around because you enjoy our time together. And if I didn’t want that too? I’d have given you the ‘I’m busy tonight’ a good half a month ago, at least. Just so you know.”

“It…kind of crept up on me,” Wes said. “Never meant to. Be around so much.”

“I think this… _person_ you’re wound up about? The one you think you can’t have? If it was real, you’d find a way to be with them instead of me.  So… I think it’s really about me…”

Travis was forking over the macaroons faster, now, in time with his racing thoughts: downing another of the treats himself, feeding Wes a second one, too, Wes chewing and looking dubious, like he still maybe might try to stop him.

“It’s …transference. Like Doctor Ryan described, you know? You’re transferring your feelings for _me_ onto _them_ and … I won’t .. I can’t …let you make that mistake. It’d be …all wrong.”

“Stop,” Wes said, a hand coming up to stop the fork headed his way before Travis could shove even more dessert in his mouth. “Please, stop.”

“Sorry,” Travis said, setting the fork down. “I had to get that out. And I was on a roll.”

“Yeah, you were. But it’s not transference,” Wes said. “I know it’s not.”

“Oh,” Travis said. “You’re that sure, huh? About your feelings for this….girl? Guy? Help me out with the pronouns, please?”

“It’s not transference because….there’s no other person,” Wes said. “I lied.”

“You…what?”

“I lied. There’s no other person.”

“Then…. it is me? You’re wound up about?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, okay?” Wes tried to deflect, but Travis couldn’t stop grinning. “It doesn’t mean anything. Because we’re partners, and because it’s crazy and we _can’t to this,_ so…”

“Hell yeah, we can,” Travis said. “And…shush for a second. Please? Let me think.”

“There’s nothing to think about. You’ve gotta see that, too? That it doesn’t make any sen… "

“Hold that thought,” Travis said, picking up one of the macaroons. “And hold this: Don’t bite through it…”

He was aiming the morsel at Wes’ surprised mouth, and yeah- it could backfire, big time but…he needed to shut him up and he needed a second to think. He also needed their mouths close together, because if they were he could make Wes see it; could make him feel that it _did_ make sense.

So… now, there Wes was – sitting on his damned sofa, with a chocolate coconut macaroon between his front teeth. 

Travis felt half like laughing, a tenth like getting kind of emotional at Wes trusting him, doing this, and mostly like moving things the hell forward. He leaned in slowly, and bit the front half of the treat away.

Their lips brushed briefly as he took a bite, and again as they chewed, forehead to forehead, both of them breathing the air between them, silent.

“It could all go to hell,” Wes finally said. “If we …things could get…so much worse.” 

Mister Optimism himself, Travis thought. But he didn’t say a thing back – just dropped the plate on the coffee table, picked up one of the macaroons and…set it between his own front teeth. Leaning in. Bumping Wes’ forehead, again, with his own.

Closing his eyes, and _that_ was taking a risk, wasn’t it? A risk to his heart and ego and…

Travis felt seconds tick by with no hint of contact from Wes. He waited and waited and was about to give up when….a nibble. A bite. Warm lips brushing his once, twice, three times and…It was _amazing_ how fast they both downed that last bite of dessert; at the way brushes turned to kisses, sucks and nips.

Travis urged Wes down and flipped them, getting up over him and …wow … it was equally amazing how their bodies slotted together; hip to hip, legs entwining liked they’d done this a dozen times, mouths opening and tongues sliding until that sweet, warm, slick dance was all they could focus on. All that there _was_ , for now.

“You were wound up…about me….” Travis pulled back enough to say, eventually. “Admit it. You want me. You want more from me.” 

“I told you, don’t flatter yourself.”

Travis hadn’t bothered to argue the point; just got his fingers in that pretty, blond hair and tugged and the sound Wes made? Like he was climbing the stairs to heaven?

That was admission enough.

~*~

Travis woke up in his own bed the next morning, and rolled over.

Wes wasn’t there; but exhilarating memories from last night surrounded him. He dropped back and let them dance around his brain: The two of them wrapped around each other, twisting, doing a horizontal dance so intense it made the sofa kinda rock.

And if that weren’t enough, there was the slow strip tease between the sofa and his bedroom; the warmth of being skin to skin with him in his bed, and those sweet sounds: Wes getting breathless, giving off little _mmmmms_ Travis never would have guessed in a million years that he’d hear out of him.

Travis was pretty sure he could live on those sounds for a couple of years, easy if he had to.

Right now, he heard something else: Wes in the living room, in the kitchen. His bare feet on the floor, and light banging sounds; maybe cabinet doors, or maybe Wes searching up and putting on his shoes. Leaving?

It kind of all hung on this, didn’t it? Either Wes was leaving without a word and things just got way more complicated, or…

The feet were padding down the hall. A door shut. A pause and…taps turning. Water running in his shower. The smell of coffee brewing in his kitchen grew, while Wes showered.

Travis practically sat up in bed from it: The deeply happy feeling of ‘oh, hell, yes…”

Then he flopped back, pulling in a couple of pillows and settling on his belly.

He would sleep some more, and then shower up, too. Wes would have breakfast pulled together by then. They would eat and go in to work, just like… normal.

Potential, future normal.

Travis could allow himself to hope for that, now. To look forward to it: Their new normal.

 

~fin~


End file.
